Sunday, November 13, 2011

Going Platinum

Earlier this year I posted about feeling guilty for being unhappy. One of the things I wrote about was how frustrated I was by my job as a brokerage service representative. After 4.5 years of taking call after call with no break, I felt as though my job was a soulless zombie, feasting on my heart day after day. Oh, how I longed for a new job.

You know the old saying, "be careful what you ask for because you might get it?" Yeah, that. In May I went to Minneapolis for a week to meet my boss face to face and for a special seminar for an employee board I am on. While there, I found out that another group was hiring. This group does high-level dedicated service for our top-producing agents. Knowing that the job would require the ability to create relationships with my advisors and would involve more variety and problem solving and not as much slavery to a phone queue, I lobbied hard for the job. I went and introduced myself to the manager (it was the only chance he would have to meet me before I applied) and then posted for the job. I got it! Yay!

What I failed to realize fully is that I went from being a big fish in a little pond to a little fish in a big pond. Suddenly I needed to be an expert on every area of our company. I can have an advisor call me for a brokerage issue, or a compensation issue. He could be having problems with a mutual fund or an annuity. She could have a complaint about an insurance policy or our marketing group. Like all jobs, this has a learning curve, and I have been climbing that curve since July when I started.

I know I will rock at this job. It makes the most of my best skills in finance and customer service and I am still very thankful that I got it. It's just that it's taking me awhile to learn it all and kinda kicking my butt in the process. Champs isn't working (he's been out of work since August) and I've been working too much. Oh, how I long for balance.

My goal this week is to leave my desk by 4:30 every day. I will dig deep and find it in myself to apply myself every minute and to produce my best work. Because this job isn't a soulless zombie feasting on my heart. It is feasting on other parts of me, however, and the time has come for me to be in control of my time again.

I'm not sure what the main point of this post is, so I can't wrap up with my pithy closing statement as I normally do. It's just that when it was time for me to blog, this job was on my heart, so that's what I wrote.